[MSN] Woman pleads no contest in stolen painting case

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Woman pleads no contest in stolen painting case
Alamogordo Daily News
By John Bear, Staff Writer
Alamogordo Daily News
Article Launched:03/02/2007 12:00:00 AM MST

A woman arrested in September for being in possession of a stolen Salvador Dali painting pleaded guilty to lesser charges in Magistrate Court because the painting was largely worthless.

According to Santa Fe-based art expert Bernard Ewell, the painting is not a painting at all, but a fraudulent reproduction probably made by a counterfeiter.

Donna Renteria plead no contest Feb. 21 to a charge of possession of stolen property valued between $250 and $500. She received unsupervised probation for 182 days.

Renteria was originally charged with possession of stolen property valued at more than $20,000.

Ewell said the painting is not a painting at all, but a print. And the original was not a painting but a drawing.

"It's like calling a bicycle an automobile," he said.

And, he said, it's not even a real print, but a fraudulent reproduction.

Ewell said the print may have come from the same plates, but the signature is a forgery perpetrated by a notorious forger of Dali signatures, one Peter "Captain John" Moore, a former Irish soccer player turned Dali aficionado who reportedly made his fortune selling fake Dali signatures to publishers of reproductions.

Ewell said if this was France, he would have the legal authority to destroy it. He said in the art world, the print isn't worth anything at all. 

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